So I went and I watched it, you might want to as well. It's a 90 minute 9/11 conspiracy film. I am hesitant to use the documentary. It's rather well done. Very well edited with powerful images and visuals. It raises many questions and points many fingers.

Here's what I wrote back:

K,

This was a very well made conspiracy film. Except for the bad audio quality of the voiceover recording. They needed a better microphone and an older person speaking.

As a younger person I enjoyed all manner of conspiracy theories. Kennedy was always the greatest. And it is always good to put forth ideas and subject them to study. And I still harbor a healthy skepticism in this day and age.

That said the piece makes several errors. I won’t go into details because the study of this subject could (and has) consumed the lives of many people. It's easy to get sucked into this world. They have made up their minds and nothing and no one can change them. They have become zealots who defend their holy truth against all comers.

The biggest mistake is saying the "common sense tells us so-and so". This film uses that phrase many times. Common sense cannot and should not be the basis for determining the cause of an incident so out of common place. Please note that I am not suggesting we ignore common sense, only that it has been used as a way to jump over troublesome facts and highly technical elements of 9/11.

"Common sense", has told people that dropping a Penny from the top of the Empire State building will kill a person below.

"Common sense" has shown that the landing on the moon was faked.

Instead, we need to turn to science. This often does not agree with common sense, and that angers the common sense camp. They don't want to believe that a lone gunman can shoot a man in a moving car. Common sense states that the world is quite obviously flat and everything in the universe revolves around us.

Common sense is not what you use to study uncommon problems.

Eyewitness reports. An eyewitness to a catastrophic event is not the best way to determine the facts of that event. Ask any lawyer, eyewitness accounts are the easiest to manipulate and are often flat out wrong. The witness has only a short time to take in the enormity of the event. They (generally) do not have extensive technical knowledge. Their perception of time and distance is often skewed. I'm not saying the 9/11 witnesses were lying. But there were thousands of them. And I could edit together testimony that supports almost ANY theory.

I just randomly typed "ufo world trade center" into google and got the following:

This film posits that there were explosives placed in the world trade centers. Yet no one involved in such a plot has ever come forward, made a death bed confession, anonymously blown the whistle, written a blog, confessed to his priest, his wife, had a fallout with his superiors etc etc. Explosives are highly controlled. Where did they come from? Any traces of it on the steel? It typically takes a large crew weeks to set up an implosion using heavy equipment. The building might have had several strange drills, but did anyone see a construction crew working in the towers? There are puffs on the film footage. Have you ever seen a controlled implosion? Takes a LOT of explosives to take down even a small building. And the video of these (I love watching video of imploding buildings) shows how there are dozens of sequential explosions. Maybe those puffs were caused by increased air pressure as the structure began to collapse.

There I go, getting into detail.

The gold story was interesting, but lacked a lot of detail.

The use of the classified documents at the beginning was good, but remember that there is no horrible, inhumane, or criminal act you can think up that hasn’t already been considered by our government in the pursuit of National Security. This is not cynicism or an anti-American bias on my part. It is the job of some people in government to find solutions to perceived problems. They are unconstrained by laws and morals because they are only concerned with the solution. These plans are then reviewed and modified, usually so that they fall within the limits of domestic or international law. (Or at least they used to be)

"But the CIA has gone outside of the law many times in its attempt to alter events in this and other countries."

This is true. And it's part of the 'common sense' argument for conspiracy buffs. "Our government would have carte blanch to do whatever it wanted if we were attacked by Al Qaeda."

But let's think about this operation. The CIA doesn’t like to operate in the open. Covert Ops is the phrase. Quiet action works better than grandiose events. And this event was huge. It would have taken hundreds of very skilled people to execute such a plan. A plan of vast complexity. Possible? Let me run this by you...

Fidel Castro is still alive and kicking.

We cocked up the bay of pigs, failed to rescue the Iranian hostages, could not kill Osama, Zarqawi and Saddam (and we had free reign for these operations) yet the CIA (or the ever popular 'other government agency) pulled off this amazing feat. I would think that a team capable of pulling of this kind of operation could easily make sure that WMD's were found in Iraq. It would have made the Bush's life a lot easier. I mean, it's just common sense, right?

The roots of 9/11 are deep. And the long chain of events leading to it is complex. But we are an impatient people. And we are a paranoid people. We have good reason to mistrust our government at times.

The strange thing is that there are those quick to blame our government for 9/11 in the form of a vast conspiracy, but don't seem willing to blame that same government for policies that actually DID have an affect on the world and that might have led to 9/11.

I suppose it's because that finger would then ultimately point to us. Many people believe firmly that Saddam had WMD's just before the second gulf war.

I know that he DID have those weapons because WE sold them to him. At the time we had a problem with Iran and radical Islam. The solution? Arm the secular dictator next door. Of course, that choice let to problems down the road didn’t it? I tell this fact to people and they still look at me funny. "Why the hell would we give that nut WMD's?" Indeed. The finger points to us.

The conspiracy camp asks questions. A lot of them have been answered, but others certainly haven't. The trouble is that their legitimate questions are mixed in with the cruise missiles and ufo's.

There is certainly a minute possibility that there was direct action on our part in 9/11. If that is so, then the secret CAN NOT remain buried forever. People talk. Who knows, maybe someday these folks will all be vindicated.

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1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

I saw 20 minutes of the production. Absolute crap. Un patriotic, insulting to those who were killled. The production was no doubt welcome by terrorists as it fuels fear, paranoia and perpetuates stupidity. Crap. Did I mention crap? Sir Constantine.